Some of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies are backing Samsung in the Korean giant’s ongoing patent war against Apple and have filed a “friend of court” petition with the US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals against Cupertino.
The companies, which Facebook, Google, HP, eBay, and Dell among others, are urging the Court of Appeals to reverse its earlier ruling where Samsung has to pay Apple the entire profit of Samsung Galaxy phones saying that it may lead to “absurd results.” The coalition contends that ruling will have “significant detrimental consequences for the continued development of useful modern technologies” if left to stand.
Apple and Samsung have been embroiled in legal fisticuffs for years, ever since Apple first filed a lawsuit against Samsung for violating various intellectual properties, such as tap-to-zoom, single-finger scrolling and two-finger zooming, as well as edge-to-edge glass design, among other things.
Apple was awarded more than $1bn in the first patent trial in 2012. Since then Samsung has appealed multiple times to have the sum reduced or the judgment overturned. Samsung was later ordered to pay Apple the “total profit” of its infringing Galaxy smartphones. Apple then sued Samsung for $2bn last year. Samsung’s appeal is still ongoing, and now supported by the Silicon Valley coalition’s amicus brief.
Last year, the two companies agreed to end all patent lawsuits outside of the US, leaving America the final battleground.
The tech companies in the coalition put forth their collective opinion that a smartphone or smart TV technology is made up of millions of small components and lines of codes which are too complex to be defined under a single legal definition of patent infringement which usually deals with a single design element which may be insignificant in the overall scheme of things.
Responding to the petition, a spokesperson for Apple told the court that Google has strong personal motives in the lawsuit as its Android runs Samsung’s Galaxy phones and therefore cannot be called an unbiased friend of court. Apple added that Google should not be allowed “to expand Samsung’s word limit under the guise of an amicus brief.”
H/T: Inside Source